Religions > Atheism > OT: Very Sick; Bridgewater pair ordered to pay for jail 'lodgings'.
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Jez" |
| Date: |
31 Jul 2004 11:45:12 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Very Sick; Bridgewater pair ordered to pay for jail 'lodgings'. |
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=546109
Bridgewater pair ordered to pay for jail 'lodgings'
By Martin Hickman
30 July 2004
Two men wrongly jailed for the murder of the newspaper boy Carl
Bridgewater were ordered yesterday to pay "board and lodgings" for the
18 years they were in prison. In a ruling condemned as "sick" by prison
campaigners, the Court of Appeal agreed with a Home Office-appointed
assessor that the cousins Michael and Vincent Hickey should lose a
quarter of loss-of-earnings compensation for their free food and
accommodation inside.
The verdict means the Hickeys, victims of one of the worst miscarriages
of justice in post-war Britain, will lose £60,000 each, about £60 for
each week they were locked up.
In a third case, the court ruled that Michael O'Brien, another wrongly
convicted man, should pay his "saved living expenses" for the 11 years
he spent in prison after he was convicted of the murder of a Cardiff
newsagent.
A lawyer for the Hickeys, who endured repeated intimidation and beatings
from fellow prisoners, said they were outraged by the "palpably unfair"
ruling.
The Hickeys were jailed in 1979, with James Robinson and Patrick Molloy,
after they were convicted of killing 13-year-old Carl at Yew Tree Farm,
Wordsley, West Midlands, a year earlier. The boy died from a shotgun
blast in a break-in at the farm.
During a 25-day trial at Stafford Crown Court, the Crown's case hinged
on a "confession" from Mr Molloy, fraudulently obtained by police who
showed him a fabricated confession from Vincent Hickey. Molloy died in
prison aged 53.
After a long campaign for justice, involving a 144-day hunger strike by
one of the cousins, the "Bridgewater Three" were freed in 1997 when the
Court of Appeal quashed their convictions. In 1998 the CPS said that
none of the seven police officers alleged to have made up evidence would
be prosecuted.
Michael Hickey, 42, was awarded £990,000 compensation and Vincent
Hickey, 49, £506,220 by the Home Office's independent assessor, Lord
Brennan QC, who said living expenses should be taken off. A High Court
judge, Mr Justice Maurice Kay, ruled last April that the deductions were
wrong but Lord Brennan appealed, saying his decision was "lawful and
reasonable".
Yesterday the Home Office stressed that the decision to deduct money for
lodging lay with the assessor and did not set a precedent for other cases.
Susie Labinjoh, solicitor for the Hickeys, said her clients were
"extremely disappointed". She said that while in prison, the cousins had
the stigma of being known as child killers and were subjected to
appalling conditions, including their food being regularly adulterated
with phlegm and glass.
Ms Labinjoh said: "They could not comprehend how anyone aware of the
circumstances of their imprisonment could suggest that they profited
from it in any way."
Mark Leech, editor of The Prisons Handbook, said: "It has to be the
sickest of all sick jokes. Can you imagine Terry Waite getting a bill
for the living expenses he saved during his five years wrongly held in
the Lebanon?"
_______________________________________________________________________
This is a bloody disgrace, words fail me.
--
Jez
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,
of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed
perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
R.D. Laing
.
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| User: "Dale" |
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| Title: Re: Very Sick; Bridgewater pair ordered to pay for jail 'lodgings'. |
31 Jul 2004 04:28:46 PM |
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"Jez" <iced_spear@NOSPAMdsl.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:410bcc8f$0$6448$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=546109
Bridgewater pair ordered to pay for jail 'lodgings'
By Martin Hickman
30 July 2004
Two men wrongly jailed for the murder of the newspaper boy Carl
Bridgewater were ordered yesterday to pay "board and lodgings" for the
18 years they were in prison. In a ruling condemned as "sick" by prison
campaigners, the Court of Appeal agreed with a Home Office-appointed
assessor that the cousins Michael and Vincent Hickey should lose a
quarter of loss-of-earnings compensation for their free food and
accommodation inside.
Next thing they'll be making families pay for the bullets when they execute
people.
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| User: "Lord Calvert" |
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| Title: Re: Very Sick; Bridgewater pair ordered to pay for jail 'lodgings'. |
31 Jul 2004 09:04:20 PM |
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Two men wrongly jailed for the murder of the newspaper boy Carl
Bridgewater were ordered yesterday to pay "board and lodgings" for the
18 years they were in prison. In a ruling condemned as "sick" by prison
campaigners, the Court of Appeal agreed with a Home Office-appointed
assessor that the cousins Michael and Vincent Hickey should lose a
quarter of loss-of-earnings compensation for their free food and
accommodation inside.
Next thing they'll be making families pay for the bullets when they execute
people.
Obviously the government should be counter-sued for lost wages incurred by the
pair. After all, the government was forcibly preventing them from going to work
without cause.
Rich Goranson, Amherst, NY, USA (aa#MCMXCIX, a-vet#1)
EAC Department of Applied Rattan Use
"Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which
leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy." - Robert Anton
Wilson
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